In a recent survey 44% of small business owners reported being unhappy with the performance of their employees.

To solve this type of problem, small business owners must first identify the cause and then create applicable solutions. There can be many reasons why employees under-perform and some leaders may point to poor attitudes, low motivation, low morale and individuals’ inability to work with others, or accept and adapt to change.

Although those reasons may be valid on the surface, there are always underlying issues that have led to the causes identified by the business leader.

The good news is that there are only two aspects to evaluate with under-performing employees. It’s either due to an individual’s:

ability, or

their attitude.

In either instance, the employee is not at fault.

(If you’d like help distinguishing whether its an ability or attitude issue and the communication issues that may have caused it and how better communication can fix it – let’s have a conversation. To schedule a free, no obligation Workplace Communication Assessment Strategy Session, go here now)

There are three primary communication mistakes business leaders make that prevent employees from being engaged in their workplace and contributing at higher levels:

Business Leader Mistake #1 – Not Giving Employees a Reason to be Engaged, Motivated & Contribute

Many business leaders mistakenly believe that providing someone the privilege of a steady income and certain quality of life via a paycheck should be enough to create a motivated employee.

Yet, studies continue to show that salary and benefits, although important for providing base levels of motivation, is not enough to generate higher levels of engagement.

Many managers and leaders say they are frustrated with the feeling they have to continually find ways to light a fire under their people to get them to do what needs to be done. Instead they should be investing energy in connecting to their employees on a personal level to instead find ways to light a fire within them.

The Employee Motivation Equation begins with creating an inspiring vision for the company that employees at all levels will be excited to contribute to. Daniel Pink, in his 2010 book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us identified “Purpose” as one of the key motivating components for a 21st Century workforce.

Business Leader Mistake #2 – Creating a De-Motivating Environment

In any new relationship there is always a honeymoon period where all the parties involved have good feelings about the possibilities moving forward. It’s the same when a new hire joins a company.

Unfortunately, a survey of about 1.2 million employees at mostly Fortune 1000 companies in the early part of this century conducted by Sirota Survey Intelligence, and revealed in 2005 that in 85% of companies, employee morale sharply declines after an employee’s first six months on the job, and continues to fade in ensuring years.

In a significant number of companies, as this Sirota research shows, something is occurring in these work environments that causes an enthusiastic and engaged employee to change their attitude.

Many factors can be attributed to this drop off, some of which include:

Managers that play favorites and communicate disrespectfully in the workplace,

Lack of positive feedback for contributions made

Business Leader Mistake #3 – Making a Wrong Hiring Choice

In the haste to fill positions, often those making the hiring decisions fail to invest enough time in making sure the new hire is a good fit for the position.

A “good fit’ includes assessing skills, knowledge, attitude, talent, and the education and experience a prospective team member will bring into the work environment. I call this the S.K.A.T.E. Hiring Profile (Skills, Knowledge, Attitude, Talent, & Education/Experience).

Additionally, sometimes due to unforeseen circumstances employees are asked to fill roles not originally intended, and for which their skills and talents are not the best fit.

In these situations, despite the employee’s best efforts he or she is unable to meet desired performance expectations, causing both the employee and the employer become disenchanted with the relationship. Yet, the onus must be on the employer to get it right when inviting someone into his or her work culture, and when asking a team member to take on additional work responsibilities.

What You Can Do

Before proclaiming employees are unmotivated, and/or unwilling, to perform to expectations and bring positive attitudes to the work environment start evaluating these three workforce mistakes from an organizational leadership and communication perspective to see where there is room for improvement.

Remember that it comes down to only two causes. It is either an ability problem or an attitude problem. too many times training and coaching are provided as solutions to an attitude problem, which is a huge waste of resources. As you might imagine, fixing an attitude problem is much different, and much harder, than an ability problem, in most cases.

Here are 3 steps to get you started:

First step is to get clarity there.

Second, once you make that decision, know that for whichever you choose, the foundational cause of that situation is some form of communication.

Third, decide on the best way to approach the situation and the individual.

(If you’d like help distinguishing whether its an ability or attitude issue and the communication issues that may have caused it and how better communication can fix it – let’s have a conversation. To schedule a free, no obligation Workplace Communication Assessment Strategy Session, go here now)

Conscious communicators are extremely aware of both the specific words that come out of their mouth as well as how those words come out of their mouth.

This comes in many forms, such as, the syntax or order of the words, the tone and inflection of each of the words, the quantity of the words that are used, as well as the proper use of the words applied in situations.

In my decade long study of leadership and workplace communication, I’ve found that there are 7 especially damaging mistakes across those many contexts above that tend to cause significant problems between people both in the workplace and out. I call them “The 7 Deadliest Sins of Communication” and they can be applied to virtually any human interaction.

These 7 most damaging communication mistakes are:

 A lack of specificity

 A lack of desirable behaviors

 A lack of immediacy

 A lack of respectful rebuttals

 A lack of focused attention

 A lack of appropriate tone and body language

 A lack of directness and candor

I’ll be covering each of these seven communication sins in more detail individually over the next seven weeks, dedicating one blog post to each. You can get a head start on these by downloading the free white paper report on which this series is based at www.HowToImproveLeadershipCommunication.com .

I guess its not surprising that the first day back in the office from a workshop on “common sense” consulting, I’m writing a blog post on simplifying leadership.

Search Google for the keyword “leadership” and you will get 513 million results in .15 seconds.

That’s a lot of leadership advice. Somewhere in those 513 million Google search responses are some articles from my Leadership & Workplace Communication blog. And, today I want to synergize everything I know about leadership down to balancing these 3 simple skills:

Ability to learn from the past and apply those learnings to future actions and behaviors.

Focusing on what can be controlled in the present and take action only on those.

Creating an inspiring vision for the future and communicate it in a way to engage others.

For now, that’s all you need to know.

If you have something that does not or cannot fit within those three, leave a note and let’s discuss.

It says absolutely nothing and means nothing, it is one of the emptiest phrases in the english language.

It puts the person to whom it is being communicated to in a state of uncertainty. Uncertainty is one of the worst human emotions we can experience. Why would we want to put another human being in that state?

Additionally, it is simply weak, powerless communication. Or as one of my mentors Anthony Robbins would say, “it is loser language!”

Most often this weak, powerless communication comes from organizational leaders that need to influence others to get things done. Then, they are left wondering why they are constantly waiting for people to get things done for them on time and at deadline (if, necessary).

Communicating in this manner is the cause of three problems in the workplace:

Stress

Mis-communication and mis-understandings

Low productivity and missed deadlines

Call my voice mail and you will hear a specific commitment for a reply, “I promise to return your call by voice, e-mail or text within 3 hours.”

I get a lot of comments from people who leave a message for me regarding that commitment, mostly surprise, and others letting me know if they call after hours I do not need to reply late into the evening and my reply can wait. Its rather humorous!

You don’t need to have a commitment with as short a turn around as my three hours, but you must give some certainty to when someone can expect a reply. Make it 4-hours, by the end of the day, within 24 hours, by the end of the week, month, etc. whatever, just give people certainty as to when they will hear back from you.

This “as soon as possible” phrase also needs to be eliminated in other areas of our business. Especially when we are making a request of someone. How many times do we ask something of someone with less than a specific deadline, such as,

“Please get this back to me with your comments ‘as soon as possible.’ ”

Or maybe you are communicating with your spouse about coming home from the office at the end of the day and you say, “I’ll be home as soon as possible.” I’m sure this happens often in relationships and we wonder why “communication” erodes overtime in intimate personal relationships.

What does that phrase mean?

How long can you wait to reply? Technically, forever.

“As soon as possible” is in the eye, and within the realm, solely of the person responding. The person, probably you, making the request loses control of the issue and their (your) ability to influence the timing of any response.

If you want to be a more powerful leader and be able to influence people to follow you in a very positive, direct way, lose the phrase “as soon as possible,” immediately. Oooops, I mean, before the end of this week and by that I mean take the first step by changing your outgoing voice mail message by 5pm Eastern time, this Friday, July 27th.

Last December I released a new leadership concept called, The Goldilocks’ ‘Just Right’ Leadership Style, you can read more about it at this link. Getting leadership, “Just Right,” was probably first espoused by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in their work on Situational Leadershipin the late 1970s and early 1980s.

For purposes of this article, I want to focus on a leader’s communication style and what it takes to get it “just right.”

In prepping for Month/Lesson 6 in the Leadership Communication Mastery Series last week, which focused on the importance of direct and candid communication in a work environment, I developed a communication model I think will help everyone who is leading a team, a company or even a family communicate more effectively in a way that builds trust and gets results.

Time and time again, in studying leaders one of the most important traits that shows up in the most effective leaders is not just an ability to communicate, but an ability to communicate promptly, directly and respectfully. These 3 components are vital to the success of a leader because it gets to the core of creating a high-trust environment necessary for high-performance.

I have to give credit to a colleague of mine, Libby Wagner of Professional Leadership Results, for identifying these three communication components as a real difference maker. I hope this model below takes it even further to show how important each of the three are in creating a culture of effective, and trust-building communication.

Here’s why:

With this Venn Diagram you see there are four potential combinations and each has its benefits and its challenges:

Prompt/Respectful: This is used when the leader recognizes the issue and tries to confront the individual with a soft approach hoping they “get it.” Most times, they don’t “get it,” including the severity of the issue and the seriousness of the leader making the request for a behavior or performance adjustment. This often involves a lack of specificity and often falls into the category of “beating around the bush.”

Prompt/Direct: This often violates my leadership an workplace communication sin #6 “Lack of Appropriate Tone & Body Language.” The leader with this approach is often reacting immediately, in the moment with little emotional intelligence and as such may do so with a raised voice, pointing fingers, blaming, etc. and may also do so in an inappropriate location such as a public setting, like a meeting of peers, in a hallway or office with others around.

Direct/Respectful: This is communication that comes too late or too far down the road to be effective. The style and approach is correct and would be effective, if the leader would have communicated at the first, most appropriate time. However, this type of communication often comes weeks, sometimes months from the incident causing the recipient of the communication to become resentful and confused as to why the issue wasn’t brought to their attention sooner so they could do something about it.

Prompt/Direct/Respectful: This is “Champion Leadership Communication!” When a leader communicates applying all three of these components it will build trust between him or herself and the individuals they are leading as well as build high trust throughout the team as everyone will feel they are being held to a similar standard. All leaders should be striving for this level in their leadership communication style.

What do you think? How do you stack up? Most leaders are masters at two of the three, which pair do you gravitate towards? Where do you think you spend most of your time? Champion communicators master the complete triad, what about you?

Tonight we’re in Milan for the 4th concert of the Springsteen European Tour. I’ve heard many stories about the legendary Italian fans and the concerts in Milan so I’m really looking forward to tonight. After tonight we head to Florence with a stop in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower then to the show. If you’d like to follow my unique journey go to Facebook to see the map of the path we’ll be taking throughout this tour of Western Europe.

One of the greatest leaders in the history of team sports is National Hockey League Hall of Famer Mark Messier. Messier is the only player in league history to be the captain of two different teams that won the Stanley Cup. Overall in his career he was on a total of six Stanley Cup Championships.

Many leaders believe that communicating with compassion may be considered being a “soft” leader. Yet, no one ever associated the adjective “soft” with Mark Messier, one of the fiercest competitors that combined scoring talents with a physical style of play in the history of the game.

Here’s what Messier once said about the key to leadership:

“To lead, you have to have the trust of the players, and to do that you have to find a way to connect with them, to find common ground with every individual. It’s a people issue, not a sports issue. The way to find that common thread is compassion.” Messier added, “With compassion the appeal to the player is much deeper than the old hard-ass line that you’re going to get reprimanded if you don’t play well. We try to build a team, to bond, through the course of a year. And you can do that if you appeal in a compassionate way.”

If leading with compassion worked for Messier, it’s probably good enough for us, mere mortal leaders.

It’s often been said, “people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

I’d like to create a similar phrase for leaders to think about regarding building a high-performing team built on high levels of trust by leading with compassion:

“people don’t care how hard you need them to work for your vision, until they know how much you care about them as a human being first, and a team member with a role to fill, second.”

Something to think about?

What do you think of this series on Leadership Communication Lessons? Please leave a comment below and we’ve got two more coming your way before I return to the office on June 14th.

‘next up are concerts after tonight’s show in Milan is Florence, Italy.

(The next 2 weeks I’m traveling around western europe on holiday. I’ll be posting pictures from my trip on my Facebook page, if you’d like to follow my unique journey driving through Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy to see 6 rock and roll concerts with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. I’ll also be writing about the trip some here as well but the whole trip will be documented on Facebook as soon as I can find time at a wifi-hot spot on the road. In preparation for my time away, I’ve written a number of blog posts that have been scheduled to go out in advance, here’s the first one).

Now, I don’t challenge those who offer “listening” as a challenge in their world as to whether they are frustrated that others don’t listen to them when they try to communicate, or if they are admitting that they often don’t listen as attentively as they should to others. Maybe I should.

I still find it Interesting, myself that “listening” did not make my top seven deadliest of all communication mistakes.

I didn’t realize why until very recently.

I believe there are 3 reasons for this:

It’s too easy to throw “not listening” out, its just a platitude:

Additionally, I’ve found when when people bring up the subject of ‘not listening, it’s often focused on blaming others for a failure to listen and little insights into the sins of the communicator.

I originally viewed listening as a subset of Communication Sin #6 – Lack of Focused Attention, which has more to do with multi-tasking when communicating with another, but it doesn’t directly relate to listening:

It does, however, relate to the person being communicated with and their decision to give the other person focused attention.

Listening is Not a Skill, It’s a Decision:

We are born with two ears and one mouth for a reason. Most of us have heard that since we were in kindergarten.

I, personally, do not believe we need a whole lot of lessons in listening, we just need to make a decision that the other person is important enough that they deserve to be listened to.

So, listening is a choice. Listening is a choice we make every minute of every day. It’s your choice.

This question came in via e-mail to me and I thought it was a great way to take the discussion even deeper.

The simple answer comes down to two things; it’s the difference between being proactive and influential vs. being reactive and influenced.

When business leaders communicate thoughtfully and consciously they are being proactive. When leaders are proactive in their approach it is much easier for followers to be inspired by them and to be positively influenced by them.

When business leaders allow their habits to be their default way of communicating they are reactive, trying to navigate and maneuver situations, having their decisions and actions influencked by those situations.

That’s the difference. It’s a powerful difference.

Leaders that communicate consciously and thoughtfully will develop the respect, trust of those they lead.

Leaders that continually communicate with their default habits (unconsciously) will struggle gaining the trust and respect of those they are leading. These leaders will forever be trying to figure out how to motivate their people to higher levels of performance.

While evaluating my most successful workplace transformation client projects in preparation for my newest seminar on employee engagement, I made a discovery.

I’m sure other thought leaders have already come to this place but for me it was quite a revelation and those in the workshop found it of tremendous value in evaluating their leadership styles and the work environment it has created.

What I discovered is that two diametrically opposed leadership styles, lead to very similar and very negative, toxic, non-productive workplace cultures.

Let’s take a deeper look:

Leadership Style 1: Command and Control

This leadership style is one in which the leader rules with an iron hand with a very structured workenvironment in which employees need to do things according to specific guidelines. Here is a list of characteristics of the command and control leader:

This leadership style is one in which the leader takes a laissez-faire, hands off approach that offers an unstructured work environment in which employees need to figure things out on their own. Here is a list of characteristics of the avoid and let go leader:

Unclear standards

Unclear expectations

Offers an open door, listens to ideas but fails to act on them

Gives lip service to other’s ideas

People pleaser

Defensive when challenged

Often asks for other’s ideas, tries to be inclusive but little follow through and often does their own thing anyway

In an economy struggling to recover and with companies being pinched by inconsistent revenues and ever- increasing costs, business leaders need to look no further than within their workforce to return to higher levels of profitability.

It has been estimated by international research firm Gallup that U.S. companies alone are wasting $300 billion annually in lost productivity due to un-motivated, dis-engaged employees.

Additionally, the Sirota Survey Intelligence organization reported in 2005 that in 85% of Fortune 1000 companies, employee motivation and morale “declined significantly” within the first six months of joining a company, and continued to decline thereafter. And, that was during good economic times, before the economic downturn began in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Imagine what those numbers are like today?

Business leaders can dramatically improve bottom line performance by simply working to solve the problems causing those bottom-line limiting statistics.

As the world moves deeper into the 21st Century and as the younger generation continues to infiltrate the workforce, business leaders are going to have to embrace Douglas McGregor’s 1960s Theory Y approach to managing personnel that he released as management professional at MIT. McGregor’s Theory Y posited that managers view their people as ambitious and self-motivated, that they enjoy their mental and physical duties as work and will seek to grow, learn and look for greater responsibility if given the opportunity. Theory Y suggests that for these reasons employees can and should be engaged in creativity, problem-solving and insights into how to improve their employers operations.

Organizations that embrace a Theory Y approach, and look to create an environment in which those type of employees thrive will turn around the trends identified in the statistics at the beginning of this article, here are some examples of how transformational these efforts can be:

Oil Rigs in the North Sea and off the coast of South America:

There is probably no greater “command and control” type of work culture than on an oil rig in the middle of an ocean. Two failing oil rigs that were losing millions of dollars due to slow productivity and cost overruns were on the verge of being closed down.

As a last resort a process was put in place to ask the frontline workers to help solve some of the productivity, efficiency and cost problems.

At the end of each of the three round-the-clock shifts a brief meeting was held to evaluate the processes applied. In the meeting a simple question was asked, “what could we have done better or differently to make this process work more efficiently.”

Due to a lack of trust build up from the old “command and control” environment, it took a couple meetings before participants felt comfortable sharing critical ideas. But, eventually, after just a few days quality information began to come forth as employees began to see that their managers were truly interested in their contributions to solving the problems. As each shift shared ideas, one shift’s ideas built on the previous shift’s ideas creating an upward spiral of process improvements.

Within just three weeks the oil rig workers, on their own, contributed, implemented and then refined ideas that had generated an 800% improvement in the workflow process. One such workflow process went from an average 8 hours down to an average of just over one-hour.

Independent Insurance Agency

A small insurance agency with eleven employees and approximately $1million in revenue was experiencing significantly low morale among its workforce and suffering with a truly toxic work environment. Co-workers had a tendency to yell at each other in the halls and were holding on to information necessary for effective teamwork and customer service

There was a culture of continual lack of follow through on the part of the company’s leadership on agreed upon initiatives that fell into a black hole never to be heard from again. Employees had developed learned helplessness and defaulted to survival and self-preservation mode creating the toxic work environment all were living and working in.

Instituting a program that included one-on-one interviews, facilitated group discussions, accountability to follow through on agreed upon ideas and initiatives, implementation of job performance expectations and office behavioral standards, and the adoption of a “Team Agreement” the basic office culture was turned around within 90-days.

From that point on additional personal and non-industry professional development trainings were instituted that supported and reinforced the initial triage. The year after the company invested in this initiative revenues increased by 33%.

Many Other Examples

These are just two examples of what can happen when employees become beyond motivated to engaged, enthused and enchanted with the company they work for and the work environment they’ve helped to create.

A manufacturing company in Southern California eliminated $900,000 in waste from hits operation within 12-months of implementation of similar strategies.

Another manufacturer in the United Kingdom increase pre-tax profits by 300% over a five-year period.

On a smaller scale a chimney sweep company with six teams and six vans to service its clients saved between $12-$18,000 within the first 30-days of the company leaders changing their approach to how they were communicating with their employees.

These results show that it is counter productive and ineffective for company leaders to continue to exert a command and control leadership style, while looking for ways to decrease payroll expenses by reducing their workforce.

Instead business leaders should be shifting their approach to one of “engage and enroll” to tap into their company’s most value asset, their human assets on the frontline.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
This is one of the most powerful strategies to turn around any company’s financial reality in today’s challenging economy. And, best of all, it is also virtually the only strategy that will not cost a dime to implement.

If you’d like to learn more join me on for a FREE Teleclass on November 17th titled:

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